General, Politics

It’s just (a) fine

I heard about the $100M ITT fine for passing along assembly specs for night goggles to foreign countries.

Is there any reason ITT should ever get another government contract for anything?

The way I heard it described:

1) ITT was attempting to subcontract the production of the night goggles. And, of course, you subcontract to off-shore facilities to do the actual work and to keep your profits up. And, of course, the off-shore facilities are located in countries that are not the best of friends with US.
2) ITT considers our export controls laws to be a minor nuisance in conducting international business and that it is probably cheaper to ignore the laws and see if they get caught rather abide by them.

If ITT is an American corporation then they are guilty of treason and they shouldn’t be getting US government contracts; if they aren’t an American corporation they shouldn’t be getting US contracts in the first place.

It’s time to write the congressman again. Although I’m sure that because of ITT’s support of the US in 1973,he will give them a free ride this time.

General

What The World Hears Now?

Americans don’t hear a lot of news from the rest of the world, or what the rest of the world thinks is newsworthy. Our NPR station actually does broadcast some BBC news programming at hours I am not available to listen to it, so I know bits are available.

I was thinking that the station should take the five minute top of the hour news summary from radio stations from around the world and insert them into our top-of-the-hour broadcasts. I think it might be very informative. Select a particular hour, say 6 PM, and broadcast that country’s news roundup at the same time every day.

I have a list of candidate countries. These are countries I think will have English-language news broadcasts and countries that use the English language on a regular basis. (Maybe)

Washington, DC
Denver
Canada
Mexico
Australia
Japan
China
India
Russia
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Israel
Egypt
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Morocco
France
Holland
Sweden
UK
Ireland
Bermuda/Jamaica/Belize (Caribbean)
Brazil
Venezuela

There is a heavy concentration of Mideastern countries on the list, but there is a bit of news being generated today. If things ever quiet down there, we can look for other candidates in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. (I have two US cities listed because this is for the US and sometimes the news from the center of the country doesn’t mirror the headlines out of the capital. )

General, Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Congress wants to monitor all emails, IMs, etc.

The Seminal :: Independent Media and Politics � Action: Congress wants to monitor all emails, IMs, etc.

Is there something about Texas that makes Texans anti-American? I don’t know. I saw this link at Making Light. It sounds fairly disgusting and quite similar to other sentiments coming out of Washington for the past 6-7 years.

Continue reading Congress wants to monitor all emails, IMs, etc. →

General

2.9 Trillion Dollars

A Trillion is a very big number. 2.9 trillion is even bigger.

A trillion is a thousand billions. One thousand billions!

And a billion is a thousand millions.

And a million is a thousand thousands.

So a trillion is also a million millions or a billion thousands!

and 2.9 trillion is even bigger.

I just double checked the figures at the Census Bureau for 2005. The Median Household income for 2005 was $46.2 Thousand, and there are 111 million households. but you can’t just multiply the two to get a total US income. The median just means that there are 55.5 million households below the median income and 55.5 million households above the median income.  I need to find the average or total income for 2005. I figure it won’t be too far off for 2007/2008 estimates.

I found the Mean income for 2005 at the Census Bureau.  $62.6 Thousand per household. With 111 Million households, the total US household income is 6949 thousand million dollars. or 6949 billion dollars or 6.95 trillion dollars. Wow!

And the president is submitting a Federal operating budget for for 41% of that money. And since we can’t expect corporations to contribute any money to the tax base, it all has to come from the households.
Now it isn’t exactly realistic to expect a household to get by on less than the median income. Between Food, shelter, clothing, medical expenses, transportation, and the basic necessities to survive in our society, we really can’t expect people to get by with less than that, so let’s just take $46.2 thousand per household out of the equation. $46.2K x 111M = $5.1 trillion. That will leave 55.5 million householders with $1.85 trillion to cover the $2.9 trillion budget. And I suspect that the individual states are going to need some operating income as well.

Maybe we should consider having the corporations contribute to the bottom line after all. After all, they wouldn’t exist or prosper if it weren’t for the infrastructure support of the government in the first place.

I found some more interesting data at the Bureau of Economic Analysis

It would appear that the numbers derived above from the Census Bureau don’t jive with the BEA numbers in tables 9 and 10 of the linked report. They report a personal income in 2005 of $10.2 trillion vs our calculated $6.95 trillion. Did anyone lose 3 trillion dollars somewhere? That would cover the budget even.

I suppose I should take the time to understand what they are trying to saying in this release. We have a Gross Domestic Product  of $12.4 trillion, national income of $10.8 trillion, personal income of $10.2 trillion, Corporate profits of $1.3 trillion (but only $930 billion after paying taxes of $400 billion) Where will congress find the money to foot the bills?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Geek Stuff, General

International standard paper sizes

A4 paper format / International standard paper sizes

I find the whole concept of A series paper to be fascinating. Maintaining proportionality as you keep cutting the paper in half.

Dr Science (AKA Courtney Willis) did a nice demonstration of A Series, very scientifically, at the recent COSine.

Be sure the read the History section. Very interesting.

And the different relationships between envelopes and paper sizes and hole punches and drawing pens. A very integrated package.

Then there are the B and C series.

I think I shall move the to the A4 format at home. Even if the rest of the country can’t get its act in gear, that is no reason not to try. But then, I’m the kind of guy that likes to walk around with dollar coins.

Geek Stuff, General

Things to Remember

Just because you get an error message from flickr saying it can’t upload a picture to your blog doesn’t mean it’s true.  Check your blog first to see if it really happened before retrying, getting the same error message and retrying again and then finding out you have a boatload of photos in your blog all with the same look and comment. Just a different time-stamp. (unless you were really fast on the retry button.)

Do you know how tedious it is to delete a post  in this blog?

The Thoughts and Luminations of Jack Heneghan